Darkfall: New Dawn announces launch date!

January 2018 launch date confirmed

Ub3rgames – the game’s developers – have confirmed that Darkfall: New Dawn will launch on 26 January 2018 – and Lux Arcana will be there!

What is Darkfall: New Dawn?

For the uninitiated, Darkfall: New Dawn (DND) is an FPS-MMORPG set in the high-fantasy, vast, un-instanced world of Agon. The Darkfall franchise was originally launched by Aventurine Studios (a totally different development team) in 2009, with Darkfall Online. Aventurine then morphed it into the often-criticised Darkfall: Unholy Wars, and struggled to return that game to Darkfall’s heady glory days of 2009-2012.

For Lux Arcana, Darkfall represents the gaming franchise we’ve followed the most. To date our members have spent some 6 years playing it in its various forms. And why? Because it’s the only game we’ve ever seen that’s got high-skilled FPS PvP, massive clan and alliance warfare, politics, war-mongering, spying, diplomacy, crafting, trading and PvE – all in the one place. We’ve had amazing times as a clan in Darkfall – it even kicked-off our regular London/Leuven meet-ups because of the game’s social nature: we win and lose ingame together, after all.

The graphics might look outdated now, but the gameplay remains superb. And the changes its new developers Ub3rgames have brought to the game have already gone a long way to fix some of the original’s problems.

So what’s changed from the original Darkfall?

In short: a lot – and more changes are coming.

Some highlights that are in for launch:

Local banking and marketplaces with a global gold account

Mount inventories – to help you carry your gear, loot and wares

Dynamic harvesting – the further you are from safety, the better drops you’ll be getting

Armour traits – different armour types provide different potencies, and you can mix and match to suit your own playstyle

Titles – you can choose how you want to specialise in the available skills with up to 5 different titles (think of this like a skills soft cap)

Meaningful alignment – going red is a choice, but one that will make things much harder for those who dare kill their own kind

Spawn scaling – work together (even with people you don’t know) to get more loot and XP: mobs get harder and give better gains when you bring more people

No more fast travel – keeping the world localised, encouraging trade and the need to defend local, specialised resources

Village control points – ‘king of the hill’ style village captures to gain your clan much needed clan meditation points, gold and local resources – and the same for you too!

PvP has completely changed – gone is the old DFO meta where you needed to level up all skills to be viable. In come reactive blocking, weapons that are all useful (even the one-handed weapons and shield combos), encumbrance and magnitude greatly affecting spell powers and damage

So much more than can be listed here!

What does this mean for Lux Arcana?

Lux Arcana has been playing the DND ‘InDev_’ phase since it launched last year. We’ve currently got a player city and some nearby hamlets that we’ll likely be taking with us into the game when it fully launches. And we’ll be staying allied with Pickaxe Inc (aka Bewahrer der Welten from the original Darkfall) – our two clans work together and match really well – and maybe some others, too.

We’ll start actively recruiting players from our own gaming communities and the DND community itself – including players that are brand new to the Darkfall franchise. And we’ll continue to play DND during the closing weeks of this ‘InDev_’ phase (you’re welcome to join us there!).

Our final launch plans are undecided – and for obvious reasons won’t be published until we get closer to the launch itself. But we’ll keep a regular update going for all Lux Arcana community members in the weeks to come.